Letter: A crazy idea for downtown

Saturday

Aug 9, 2014 at 4:00 PM

Rockford has a commitment to supporting absurd and expensive projects in the name of revitalizing the downtown area. Open space is needed for parking, viewing fireworks and other outside activities. These ideas will ruin the ambience of the river, but the benefits could outweigh the losses.

My idea is to construct bridge piers between the Ingersoll sports project and Davis Park. Then construct a flat surface like a bridge deck, which could be used for parking or any other needed outside activities. This structure could be constructed in phases to spread out costs, and could be expanded if the structure was found to be beneficial to downtown. There would be no required demolition of existing structures, cleaning of contaminated soils or need to bring in clean fill materials.

This idea is being presented to give downtown development advocates another potentially costly idea to develop to help promote their mission of revitalizing the downtown area.